Aaron skimmed through Brian's file some more and decided that he and his team would start with the how question. How did Brian O' Conner end up working the Toretto case? Aaron grabbed the files off his desk and went out into the bullpen and saw Rossi and Reid sitting around a meeting table; the rest of the team was out in the field gathering evidence for their current case.
Reid looked up and saw more files in Hotch's hand and asked, "Is that from the other agent that just left?"
Rossi looked at Aaron and said, "What do you got for us?"
"Agent Penning wants us to try and get into these peoples heads and figure out why his fellow agent is now on the other side of law. I figured we could start with the how question. Not a lot of information in his file on his past so we'll have Garcia find the information to get a better picture."
"Start from the beginning Hotch." Rossi said as he motioned to a chair between he and Reid.
Hotch sat between the two men and opened Brian's folder - he kept Dom's closed for a reason. "This is Agent Brian O' Conner…" Hotch relayed everything that Penning told him and saw the looks on their faces as they studied the picture.
"And this guy was their top UC agent? He'd be recognizable ten miles off." Reid replied.
"Well when they aren't expecting him he could blend with any crowd and fit into a lot of age groups depending on the op he's in for." Rossi said.
Hotch added, "He's an excellent officer and agent until it comes to this man, Dominic Toretto. We have to figure out why he never arrested him in the first place and why he orchestrated a jail break off of a transport bus to their destination - Lompoc."
Reid made a strangled sound and asked, "That's the person we're trying to figure out? He's a legend, especially after this daredevil stunt. I should've recognized the names immediately."
Hotch and Rossi looked at Reid expectantly. "What do you know Reid?" Hotch asked.
"They were all over the news when the breakout happened. Remember I was too sick to come in that day and we were busy with the hitchhiker case with the three women. I totally forgot about this until now. Brian has always had a knack for UC, partly because of how he grew in a broken home, mostly living on the streets in his teen years. Then he gets sent to Juvie when he's fifteen for boosting cars and scrapes out of high school but has seen enough of the prison system that he joins the police academy and blows through all of their entrance exams so they have to take him on as a cadet. He finds the organization as a whole to be like his adopted family so he blends in, catches the eye of a sergeant Tanner, and he becomes this guy's protege…"
Hotch interrupted by clearing his throat and watched Reid stumble to a halt in his monologue. "Why didn't you tell us any of this before now?"
"It wasn't really necessary or pertaining to any of our cases."
Rossi looked at Reid curiously and asked, "When did another fed become your obsession and from the west coast at that?"
Reid swallowed and said, "I'm not obsessed with him. I looked up information after I saw all the news footage. He's not in any social media, that's to be expected as he's an undercover agent, but he doesn't have anything else online either. All this information that was available I hacked into the LAPD and looked at his FBI profile that's public to someone with a high enough clearance like us."
Rossi looked up at Hotch then and raised a brow. "We'll have to talk to Garcia about teaching him how to hack into things."
"Let's get back on track. Plenty of time for squealing and rambling later." Hotch said and he looked at Reid pointedly. Reid sat perfectly still and nodded.
Rossi, bless his heart, was thankful they were focused on each other as he rolled his eyes at their antics in a nice professional manner at that. He got his mind back on track and said, "I'll call Garcia and tell her what's going on. You two start a profile of your own on this ex-agent."
Thirty minutes later, Rossi came back to the table with a few printouts in his hand and Hotch asked, "What do you have?"
"A journal entry that his Sergeant decided to keep on file, partly because it intrigued him and he could go back and reread it to see if he could crack O' Conner."
"How did he get ahold of something as private as a journal entry from Brian?" Hotch inquired.
"He said Brian gave it to him and he put it in his file." Rossi said as he sat back down at the table and looked over Hotch's and Reid's notes. Neither had much passed what they were discussing before he left the room but that was forgivable. He hoped the journal entry would be useful to them.
Reid held his hand out and Rossi handed over the warn piece of paper and the doctor skimmed the entry for relevant information. "He had a buddy in Juvie, Roman Pearce. He seemed to always be looking after Rome because of his temper. No one really liked him talking either, Rome that is, Brian knew what he was doing."
"Does he mention where this Roman Pearce ended up?" Hotch asked as he tried to look at the paper in Reid's hands.
"No. They haven't talked since Brian left Juvie and entered the Academy." Reid stated.
"Maybe Brian feels guilt over not being able to save his friend so when he meets Dominic Toretto he makes certain choices and keeps his friend out of cuffs." Hotch said.
Rossi agreed. "Guilt is a good answer and that one seems the strongest contender so far so we'll write it down and change it if something else comes to light as we examine his friends."
"That sounds good." Reid said as he went back to reading Brian's file for the twentieth time.